APPENDIX I. 289 



great number may thus be packed into a cigar box or 

 other receptacle, and spread for the cabinet at leisure, 

 months or even years after collection. For this pur- 

 pose moistening pans are needed. A glass or stone 

 ware dish is the best, the top ground so as to allow a 

 sheet of glass to cover it perfectly ; upon the bottom 

 moistened sand is placed, covered by fine brass wire- 

 netting. A few papers with their inclosed butterflies 

 are placed in it, and the cover left on for twenty-four 

 hours or thereabouts, when the insects may be handled 

 nearly as if just caught. 



Damp, grease, and museum pests are the great de- 

 stroyers of insect collections. To avoid the first, one 

 has only to see that his cabinet is in a dry place, with 

 a play of air around it. To avoid grease, insects 

 should be thoroughly dried before being admitted to 

 the cabinet, and all use of cedar wood in constructing 

 the latter should be avoided. Against museum pests 

 one can be safe only by a constant, vigilant, searching 

 oversight of his collection, or the use of boxes which 

 they cannot enter ; even then care must be taken not 

 to introduce them oneself by placing infested speci- 

 mens in the collection ; for this purpose it is well to 

 establish a safe quarantine. 



For a permanent cabinet nothing can excell the 

 drawers made after the Deyrolle model, now in use by 

 the Boston Society of Natural History. I have tried 

 them for six years and find them entirely pest-proof. 

 They are made [Fig. 201] with a cover of glass set in a 

 frame which is grooved along the lower edge, and thus 

 fits tightly into a narrow strip of zinc, set edgewise into 

 a corresponding groove in the drawer ; the grooves be- 

 yond the point of intersection of two sides are filled 

 with a bit of wood firmly glued in place ; it is hardly 

 necessary to say that the sides of the drawer and the 

 frame of the cover should be made of hard wood ; soft 

 wood would not retain the zinc strip ; the zinc should 

 be perfectly straight and the ends well matched ; if this 

 be done nothing can enter the box when it is closed. A 



